Steven Pressley admits Carlisle United must learn their lessons from their frustrating home defeat to Mansfield.

The Blues suffered back-to-back league losses after the Stags scored twice in the first half.

United were toothless in their attempt to fight back while the game also saw visiting players and ref Carl Boyeson come in for criticism.

Pressley, though, said that while Mansfield’s “antics” in “throwing themselves on the ground” was frustrating, his own team did not help their cause.

He said: “The way Mansfield set up, and their selection of personnel, was a measure of the respect they’d given us.

“They applied certain antics during the game to try and break our rhythm, but the disappointing factor was we had a lot of ball, didn’t defend two moments in the first half particularly well, and we didn’t create enough clear-cut chances.

“Our players that have been getting real positive reviews of late didn’t manage to create the moments they’re capable of.

“What it does show us is that this is what you’re sometimes going to face.

“When you’re a team that plays the way we play, teams can be spooked by that, and they’ll come here and will try and sit in and make things very difficult.

“We have to become better at breaking them down.”

United failed to score for the first time at home under Pressley and the 2-0 defeat came via goals from Danny Rose and Nicky Maynard.

It was Mansfield’s first victory of the campaign and the first half in particular saw United’s fans vent their anger at the regular stoppages which saw visiting players needing treatment.

They also jeered referee Boyeson for his apparent failure to control this aspect of the game.

Pressley said: “I don’t think he [Boyeson] allowed the game to run and it suited them.

“They’d come here to spoil, they were throwing themselves on the ground continuously, but that’s something you need to deal with.

“I felt there were too many stoppages within the game and it affected the fluency of the game.”

Asked by BBC Radio Cumbria if referees should deal differently with such incidents, he said: “Agreed, but I’d also like players to behave better.

“They went down holding their head on a number of occasions and unfortunately for the referee, when it’s a head knock, he has to be seen to be stopping the game.

“There didn’t seem to be too many problems [with those players] after he stopped the game. That’s the disappointing thing.

“We allowed that a little bit to frustrate us towards the end of the first half. You can understand why.”

He added: “I said [at half-time] that we had to not get frustrated by it. Some younger players sometimes get frustrated and lose their focus on what we’re trying to do, and it can affect their performance.

“That’s something we need to learn from. It was a game we must win, with the amount of ball we have, but we’ll not win games if we defend the two moments like that and we don’t carve out enough opportunities that our possession should have led to.

“There were a lot of things we did well. We won a lot of personal battles, had a lot of the play, but just didn’t create those moments or defend those two moments in our box. That’s what the game consisted of.”